Optipac behaving funny, gives the pointer the jitters when trackball is moved

[exibar]

I have an OptiPac that when plugged in with the Ipac (the Ipac works perfectly that I can tell), the Ipac stops working (I want to verify this a third time though), and the windows mouse cursor just twitches and moves kinda left and up, but not normal movement, really really really slowly and very jittery.
  Both optipac and ipac are USB devices

  I've removed my trackball from the Optipac and just left my spinner, same thing, I've removed my spinner and left my trackball, same thing, I've even taken my trackball apart so I can try and move the indivual rollers, same thing.  
   Spinner encoder board is a Happ board (tried an original tempest encoder, same thing) and the trackball is a 3" happ as well.

  Any ideas?  Please don't say that my optipac is bad, I've just gone through returning a bad arcade VGA card and I don't want to have to go through that again with the optipac :-(

  thanks all!    

[reebboy]

Have you checked all your wire connections and USB connections for proper security?? I had the same problem with my spinner when I installed it and found that a ground wire was not touching the terminal very well. As a result I was getting the same thing lots of twitching and strange movements.

[exibar]

yup, everything is securely attached to the Optipac.  I even unwired the trackball and spinner, and tried them one at a time to see if that helped....  it didn't :-(


  The whole project has been fighting me tooth and nail... I wish I knew why :-(

[_Iz-]

Did you try disconnecting the i-pac from the computer and try the optipac alone?  

No chance you're doing something silly like connecting the serial power cable to the i-pac and optipac (not needed in usb mode)?

[exibar]

Yup I did try that last thing last night.  Still no dice ;-(

  I'm sure it is something silly, but not the serial power, I don't have the power adapter just the 9-pinDB to USB connector that came with the Optipac.

  I'll take any suggestions to heart and try them out when I get home tonight.

[_Iz-]

how do you have the active hi/lo jumpers set? The tempest spinner optic board was an active hi part, not sure about the happs spinner optics / trackball...

[exibar]

I have them set to Active Low, I put the HAPP optic board on the tempest spinner.

  I'll swap the tempest board back on and set it to HI and give it a whirl (no pun intended <grin>)

[AndyWarne]

To help with troubleshooting this kind of problem, I recently added some more info to the Opti-PAC install page on our site. The last section on http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac3.html
This might help. If it does not, drop me an email.
Andy Warne

[exibar]

Thanks Andy!  I'll check it out and let you know how I make out.

 

[exibar]

Wierd thing solved this, I plugged the Optipac into USB #1 instead of USB #2 and the TrackBall started working properly and the IPAC started working properly as well....  But if the IPAC was in USB#1 and Optipac in #2, it wouldn't work....

  Wierd, both USB ports are USB 1.1 ports....  At least it works :-)

  The spinner was another deal, I swapped the HAPP board for the original Tempest board, put the meter on it like Andy's instructions say to test it and things seemed to work as they should.  I put the board back on the spinner and found that I had the board on too far into the spinner disc.  When I put the original tempest board back on, it sat correctly on the spinner frame and gave me the right spacing.  All worked as it should :-)

   I think the combo of being in a USB port that it didn't like for some reason, and the opti-board being too far into the disc caused the problem....  

   All appears right with the world tonight :-)  For the first time since I started the project too :-)

  thanks all for the help!

      Mike B